Why leftism is bad for mental health

Study after study shows that our friends and family on the political left are not doing well in terms of mental health. The General Social Survey cumulative cross-sectional dataset tracked this phenomenon since 1972 and found that “extreme liberals” had a 150 percent increase in mental illness compared to moderates. A study from a team of Columbia University epidemiologists found that depression rates among liberal female teenagers have far outpaced all other demographics. A litany of studies demonstrates far higher levels of happiness, wellbeing, and meaning in life for people on the right.

Surely such data calls for a deeper analysis, but there is one often ignored factor that I believe accounts, at least partially, for the disparity. It is the way in which leftist ideology and recruitment strategies overgeneralize and politicize personal traumas. To see the point, ponder how phobias work. A trio of brain regions function together as what doctors have called “The Uh-Oh Center.” At the genesis of many phobias we find lived experiences that light up the brain’s Uh-Oh Center like a Christmas tree. A scary childhood sickness, a panic attack in a tight space, or a humiliating social moment can rewire a brain for germaphobia, claustrophobia, or social phobia.

Exposure therapy has proven positive outcomes for phobics. Why? Because the arachnophobe who learns to pet a tarantula learns that not all spiders are out to kill him. The germaphobe eating chips from the communal party bowl learns that she won’t drop dead from Ebola. Rational cognitive therapy also has a solid clinical track record of helping people heal. When our brain’s Uh-Oh Center ignites, our brain’s Assessment Center goes dark. Cognitive therapists help people spark their Assessment Centers so we can challenge the catastrophic signals of our Uh-Oh Centers. In short, good psychologists help phobics ungeneralize. They help people internalize the fact that specific trauma should not be generalized in a way that the whole world begins to feel more traumatic than it already is. Trauma from this spider does not mean all spiders are out to kill you.

Leftist ideologies—whether they come in the form of critical race theory, gender theory, or more general social justice doctrine—do the exact opposite of what good psychologists aim to do. Leftist ideologies overgeneralize. That spider bit you. Listen to all these other stories of lethal spider bites. Here are some Facebook groups, Podcasts, public protests, and college courses to remind you daily—the spiders, or rather the racists, the Islamophobes, the bigots, capitalists, and patriarchal oppressors—are all out to get you! The brain’s Assessment Center is bypassed. Anyone questioning whether the spiders are out to get you is probably a spider himself! The Uh-Oh Center ignites and leftist ideology tolerates nothing that might stop the flames from spreading until the whole brain turns to ash.

This is where the authority leftism grants to “lived experience” factors in. If a little boy, call him Johnny, has been convinced that most, if not all, spiders are out to get him, then imagine what Johnny will experience the next time he spots a daddy longlegs under his bed. He will experience fear from an arachnid that is clearly an existential threat. He truly feels it is out to get him. The only problem is that Johnny’s reality is not reality. Daddy longlegs spiders are harmless to humans.

Some will read me as saying there’s no such thing as gender discrimination, or racism; it’s a conspiracy fobbed on us by leftwing media or the Marxist infiltrators. That is not what I am saying. There are real creepy spiders with venomous bites in the world. There are real misogynists and real racists out there in our post-Genesis 3 world. When they strike, it is the Christian mandate to listen and love the struck. My point is that to love people well—especially people who bear the wounds of racism, sexism, or any other sinful -ism—we must be careful to not inadvertently pour salt in their wounds with an ideology that generalizes their trauma.

As one former leftist describes his experience: “We … saw insidious oppression and exploitation in all social relationships, stifling our ability to relate to others or ourselves without cynicism.”

If leftism has us seeing ourselves primarily as oppressed, then most everything around us will look like oppression. In short, leftism, for all its claims of empathy, is fundamentally cruel. It adds psychological oppression to the already suffering. The more we come to think that reality is best understood as the oppression of the bigots, capitalists, and sexists, the more our brains are literally rewired for a chronic state of fear. In that state, the leftist will believe he has been retraumatized by the person who made a thoughtless comment who, thereby, embodies all the evils of the West.

Of course, Christians on the right must not play the same cruel game in reverse, raising generations to live in chronic fear of those evil “secularists,” “liberals,” “Marxists,” “evolutionists,” “immigrants,” “homosexuals,” or whatever. Fear must never be a prime motivator in any thoroughly Christian justice. We must not teach any ideology—left or right—that pumps enough wattage into people’s Uh-Oh Centers to light up Times Square. That would be mean and failing to love.

God commands us to “fear not” over a hundred times through the Bible. God is not only pro-justice; He is also pro-fearlessness, and we should be too. If we advance ideologies that generalize people’s painful experiences, leave them chronically triggered, and set their Uh-Oh Centers ablaze—then we should not pretend that we are doing the kind of justice Scripture commands.